Tag Archives: DOMA

There always a lot of good photos to enjoy over the course of a year, but perhaps my favorite — and certainly of the summer — is this one from the Associated Press, which says so much with so little. (It also reminds me of another iconic photo, which you can see after the jump.)

Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal group, is defending the Tulsa County Clerk’s Office against a lawsuit involving marriage equality because a federal appeals court ruled the governor and attorney general have no standing.

They believe the Defense of Marriage Act ruling bolsters their case. The case was filed in federal court in Tulsa in 2004 where it has been stalled. However, they are challenging the section of DOMA that still stands, allowing one state to refuse to recognize a marriage performed in another state.

Now that the DOMA ruling has been issued, attorneys for the couples are urging U.S. District Judge Terence Kern to rule in the case.

A number of cases are working their way through the courts. According to the blog Hunter of Justice, a Nevada and a Hawaii case are farthest along. In addition to the Oklahoma case, a Michigan and a North Carolina challenge to marriage bans are in federal courts. New cases have been filed in Virginia and Pennsylvania, Illinois, New Jersey and New Mexico state courts.

Shareholder resolutions haven’t worked, so after the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling striking down the Defense of Marriage Act, New York state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli is trying a new tactic to force the ExxonMobil to adopt an LGBT-inclusive nondiscrimination policy.

In the past, DiNapoli has filed shareholder resolutions with ExxonMobil. As the sole trustee of the state’s $160 billion pension fund, he has some clout among many companies whose stock is in the fund. He has successfully negotiated changes in policies at about 30 of them.

As head of the pension fund, he uses the business argument. If ExxonMobil discriminates by not offering benefits to same-sex married couples, while Shell, Chevron and BP offer the benefits, then the company is shrinking its employee pool and hurting the value of the stock the state owns. New York controls more than $1 billion in ExxonMobil stock.

UPDATE: Congressman Tom Latham’s office called this morning to say his name never should have been on the bill. Placing his name on the bill was a staff member’s mistake and it was withdrawn as soon as the mistake was discovered.

ORIGINAL POST: Since part of the Defense of Marriage Act was struck down, the Federal Marriage Amendment has re-emerged but appears to have little chance of passage at this time.

In the House of Representatives, one Democrat and 38 Republicans, including eight from Texas, have co-sponsored a House Joint Resolution proposing an amendment that would enshrine marriage in the Constitution as between one man and one woman.

Texas has twice as many co-sponsors of the bill as the next closest state, North Carolina, with four. The Democratic co-sponsor is Nick Rahall of West Virginia.

Four of the Texas Republicans are from the Dallas area — Rep. Sam Johnson of Plano, Rep. Joe Barton of Arlington, Rep. Kenny Marchant of Coppell and Rep. Ralph Hall of Rockwall.

Since its introduction, the resolution has already lost one co-sponsor, Tom Latham, R-Iowa,, but picked up Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kansas, this week. Latham’s state has marriage equality.

The only current co-sponsor from a state with same-sex marriage is Rep. Andy Harris, R-Maryland.

No women co-sponsored the resolution. Only one co-sponsor is under 40 and all are white men.

Each house of Congress would have to pass the proposed amendment by a two-thirds vote before going to state legislatures where it would have to be ratified by three-fourths of the states. More than a quarter of the states have marriage equality.

FMA was first proposed in 2002 and last failed in the House of Representative in 2006.

The Illinois department said the investigation would take up to a year.

Tico Almeida, founder of Freedom to Work, said his group brought the charges in Illinois because that state has some of the country’s strongest protections based on sexual orientation.

In May, the organization sent similar resumes to ExxonMobil for an open position. The difference was that one applicant was lesbian while the other was straight and slightly less qualified. The company contacted the straight woman and held the job open for her even when she didn’t respond. The more qualified lesbian candidate was never contacted.

Locally, Cece Cox, CEO of Resource Center Dallas, sent a letter this week to two ExxonMobil executives — Malcolm Farrant, vice president of human resources, and David Rosenthal, vice president of investor relations and board secretary. Last year, she met with them along with LGBT executives from Dallas-area Fortune 500 companies to discuss implementing nondiscrimination policies.

“As most of my subsequent inquiries to you have gone unanswered, I am writing today to see where things stand on the matters that were discussed,” she wrote.

She references the recent ruling on the Defense of Marriage Act and bipartisan Senate committee approval of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act this week.

“I’ve said this before, but with last week’s DOMA ruling, I think it bears repeating. The heterosexual community has done more to undermine the traditional family than same-sex marriage ever could,” Krause posted on his Facebook page. “High divorce rates, rampant infidelity, and the astronomical numbers of children being born into homes without fathers should cause us much concern. While it is important to be active and engaged on all fronts that seek to undermine the family, we fool ourselves if we think same-sex marriage is the one thing that could destroy the nuclear family. Agree or disagree?”

Krause, who’s worked for the anti-gay Liberty Counsel, authored HB 360 earlier this year. In its initial form, the bill would have allowed university clubs to discriminate based on race, gender and sexual orientation. Krause later reworded the measure and offered it as an amendment to another bill, but it was cut from the final version.

Many who’ve commented on Krause’s Facebook post agreed with him, while some pointed out that he shouldn’t be against same-sex marriage.

Talk about good timing: After a few preview screenings in theaters (including in Dallas), HBO’s documentaryThe Out List debuted last Thursday, just as the whole country was talking about the Supreme Court’s landmark decisions. The film makes a nice coda to those lawsuits, as well as Pride month, and it resonates especially in Dallas because one of the subjects is Dallas sheriff Lupe Valdez.

Valdez is the fourth of the celebrities interviewed, and the second (immediately following screenwriter Dustin Lance Black) from San Antonio. Valdez is also the first of the interviewees to openly discuss her faith and how it affected her coming out, as well as how her ethnicity set her apart as “other.” It’s an interesting and diverse lineup, and if you missed it, you can see it this week again. It airs on HBO Wednesday, July 3, at 3:30 p.m. (and again three hours later on HBO West, as well as on HBO Latino), then on Friday, July 5 at 1:30 p.m.

My only real criticism is: Why is it that on the poster, interviewee Larry Kramer, above left, looks like Emperor Palpatine?

America’s most famous drag queen, known for throwing her share of shade, gets serious for a minute, gathering the cast and crew of the upcoming Season 6 of RuPaul’s Drag Race to make a statement about the repeal of DOMA. Everybody say “Love!”